Heather Yakin: Bin Laden's evil credo doesn't justify torture

The Oscar-nominated movie "Zero Dark Thirty" has people talking about torture again.

Heather Yakin

The Oscar-nominated movie "Zero Dark Thirty" has people talking about torture again.

The movie, a dramatized account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, is said by some to depict the torture of a captive as a productive exercise that extracted valuable information. Critics say that characterization is overblown.

I haven't seen the movie, so I'm not going to comment on whether I think it's an accurate retelling or fiction. But the idea of torture as a means to produce truthful information is striking.

History is replete with examples of how torture mostly succeeds at producing information that captors want to hear. As it turns out, someone who's subjected to intense pain will say anything to make that pain stop — whether or not it's true.

The European witch persecutions of the 1400s to the late 1600s provide glaring examples of the sorts of information that torture provides, something etched in my brain from a youth in which I invested much time in reading up on that history.

People "confessed" to flying through the air, attending witches' Sabbaths, cursing their neighbors, turning into cats. They "confessed" to causing storms and droughts, to eating babies and consorting with incubi or succubi.

We know that false confessions happen; documentation on that phenomenon is growing daily. But how could people come up with such fantastic stories?

Demons and witches were the terrors of the times, the great enemies that inspired a similar flavor of ideology that fueled the McCarthy-era Red hunts.

Back in the days of the persecution, witch-finders devised tests and trials designed to ferret out occult practitioners. There was dunking, where witches floated and innocents sank (and possibly drowned). There was a form of torture that employed forced standing while holding heavy objects. Prolonged sleep deprivation was used as well.

Suspects — usually women — were often shaved of all hair and their bodies examined in minute and intimate detail for "witch's marks;" if no visible marks were found, the witch-finder might employ a technique called pricking, in which he prodded the suspect's skin with a sharp point, looking for a telltale, incriminating insensate spot.

More extreme techniques such as strappado and the rack were occasionally employed. So-called "confessions" were as lurid and horrifying as the torturer's imagination allowed, and if the stories seemed to defy the laws of God and nature, well, that was just proof of diabolical influence.

Torture's not a valuable way to extract important information; it's a way of acting out aggressions, and it's usually counterproductive. It hardens an enemy's hatred and destroys any chance of creating a rapport that could actually lead to the truth.

No one's shedding any tears for bin Laden, who spent decades spreading hatred and violence. But the torture of captives — some of whom are actually innocent — creates new enemies eager to carry out bin Laden's mission.